å Tuesday, December 8th, 2015

The WELL was founded by Stewart Brand and Larry Brilliant in 1985 as a way to put the Whole Earth Catalog online. The WELL brought together countercultualrists and New Communalists from the Whole Earth Catalog model and offered them a space where they can interact with like-minded people. The groups that were on the WELL had cybernetic ideals and believed that shared information was very important. This shared information was a product that was supplied by the consumers who were part of the WELL. This information was what the WELL founders were selling to its consumers and the price of the subscription coupled with the writers of the content made this appealing to those who wanted to be a part of the  community New Communalists had dreamt of.

In my opinion, from reading this chapter, the WELL operates a self-governing system by engaging its members. Everyone can express themselves how they want in this community but it is up to the individual as to what they want to see. Everyone is their own moderator. If there was a comment from a person that you did not like all you had to was use the technology that WELL provided (Bozo filter) to erase the comment from their own screens, but not erasing it from the entire community.

This form of self-governing is exactly how the New Communalists had their community with a nonheirarchical structure while using technology. They did not have people overseeing each community within WELL that would decide what was right or wrong. Instead, they let each individual make that decision on their own. As with any new technology WELL would evolve by seeing how its members dealt with certain situations and using that as a better understanding of the social and technological interactions that its members dealt with allowing them to better use WELL.